Moda Hairdressing – Or how a photographer can enhance your marketing

The best kind of business always comes from word-of-mouth, and this was the case with Moda Hairdressing recently. It also gives me a great opportunity to highlight how a professional photographer can benefit your marketing.

Mike, who I had met a few years earlier, runs his own website design company Whype, and on his recommendation guided Moda to me.

Commissioning a photographer was something completely new to Tina and Franco, who had recently set up the Moda salon. What I was able to deliver for them, on initial inspection, included:

· A collection of new hairstyle shots for the salon and website graphics

Here’s what I did:

• Gave them ideas on how to prepare and formulate ideas for the shoot itself:
• Provided a theme and look for the shoot
• Advised on the kind of styles they wanted as well as, colours, dramatic cuts.
• Did they want to cover men’s hair, as well as women’s?
• How many styles? This steers how much time I had with them.
• I asked them to buy a pile of magazines they like and to put together a look book/mood board. This helped them to create their own Brief.
• On my suggestion, we started with the finish date/deadline for images and worked backwards for dates for the casting and shoot.
• Prep days to prepare the models, which needed a colour or cut. On the shoot day, this means they only have to style the hair - this makes full use of the time available for the shoot itself.
• Asked them to think about make-up looks, and discussed a make-up artist we both liked, who we’d like to use for the job.
• From the mood board, we developed a style for the clothes and accessories. This helped with styling and shopping
• Suggest on a casting:
• This involves an online casting, looking at suitable models for their look and appropriate styles for the hair.
• An actual casting in the salon. This involved a simple lighting set-up and shooting the model to see what they could do and they were like in front of the camera. This was also a good chance for them to shine, as well as showing their portfolio.
• A web gallery of the shots was made. This allowed them to view the images and make a considered decision, whilst we also had an ongoing discussion during the shoot. A web gallery is added value service I offer to my clients. Particularly if clients do not want to make on-the-spot decisions.
• Tina and Franco were happy to follow my lead with regard to appropriate models.
• The shoot took place in the salon, as they had all the backwash facilities and tools to hand.
• To give them added reassurance, I shot all the images straight to the computer so they could see the detail in the hair. This is imperative when shooting hair, so you can correct stray hairs and get the style ‘camera ready’.
• From the web gallery a short list of images were chosen after a brief discussion, which was edited down to a shorter list.
• These were then processed, re-touched and made print-ready.
• These images were made into large print ready versions for the salon walls, press releases and features, and web-ready versions for the website and relevant social media sites.

So, as you can see, a photo shoot delivered far more than a series of shots – it gave the Moda Hairdressing management team the basis on which to plan and deliver a full marketing programme for 2010. Now that’s the kind of value I’d like to see a photographer delivering to me if I was a client. Wouldn’t you?